John Steinbeck would have loved Slab City. It wasn’t on his route. It’s rarely on anybody’s. But on an abandoned military base in the desert of southeastern California, there are some highly colorful characters among the snowbirds and squatters who call…

Name: Unknown Breed: Chihuahua mix Age: Unknown Encountered: Atop a scattered pile of discarded clothing in Slab City, outside of Niland, California. Backstory: During my visit to Slab City, I stopped to take a photograph of a pile of clothing…

Driving down a two-lane highway whose dips send your stomach somewhere in the vicinity above your lungs, alongside an accidental lake that is saltier than the ocean, through a landscape that can only be described as lunar, you know there’s a…

Name: James Dean Breed: Brooding rebel Age: 24 at the time of his death. Were he alive today, he’d be 79. Encountered: The James Dean sign is at Blackwell’s Corner, a gas station, nut dealer and memorabilia shop in Lost Hills, California that bills…

The ashes of the man who inspired our — as of today — six months on the road are buried in the town where he was born, at the Garden of Memories in Salinas, where another funeral was underway when Ace…

On our last west coast afternoon, Ace and I were wearily headed back to the motel after spending the day touring Monterey when the beach beckoned. Knowing our route was going to take us inland, that there’d be no more Pacific Ocean…

“The beaches are clean where once they festered with fish guts and flies. The canneries which once put up a sickening stench are gone, their places filled with restaurants, antique shops and the like. They fish for tourists now, not…

Ace and I were strolling down Fisherman’s Wharf in Monterey — a place where one can make a meal out of the free samples of clam chowder offered by hawkers trying to lure you into their establishments. Rather than mooch samples all afternoon,…